New Season, New Leaders: What Football Can Teach Us About Leadership

As the new football season gets underway, managers across the country are facing a familiar challenge: how do you get the best from a group of very different people?

It’s a question that applies just as much to managers in the workplace. You can have talented individuals, a clear goal and a good plan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have an effective team.

Here at Ascento we spend a lot of time thinking about leadership, so a summer like this one is hard to ignore even for those in the team who aren’t the biggest football fans! We've seen almost every version of leadership play out in public: calm and quiet, loud and expressive, structured and more instinctive.

So what can we take from all of this when it comes to managing and getting the best from people?

Leadership starts long before the job title

We're lucky enough to sponsor Star Strike Football Coaching, a junior club in Nottinghamshire, and as anyone involved with grassroots clubs will tell you, they’re brilliant places to watch leadership happening in its rawest form.

 None of the kids have a job title (yet) but watch for twenty minutes and you'll see leadership anyway: one starts to organise where everyone should stand, another supports a teammate after a nasty tackle, while a quieter child finds the confidence to shout out for the ball for the first time.

It's easy to overlook those small behaviours, but they're often where leadership starts.

And it's much the same in the workplace.

The strongest emerging leaders aren't necessarily the loudest people in the room or the people already asking about their next promotion. They're often the people colleagues naturally turn to for help, the person who takes responsibility when something needs doing, or the one who spots a problem and starts thinking about how to solve it.

For existing leaders, the important question is whether we're noticing those behaviours early enough and giving people opportunities to develop them.

There isn't one right management style

England provided an interesting example of this during the World Cup.

Thomas Tuchel arrived with a very different philosophy from Gareth Southgate. Tuchel's approach was much more system-first: establish a clear way of playing and choose people who fit roles within it. Southgate took a different approach; he looked at the talent he had available and aimed to create an approach that allowed those individuals to perform.

You can see versions of both approaches in the workplace.

One manager starts with the process: this is how our team operates and I need everyone to understand their role within it.

Another starts with the people: these are the strengths within my team, so how do I get the best from them?

Neither approach is right or wrong.

In fact, for all the differences between Tuchel and Southgate’s approaches, England experienced similar problems when the pressure was highest. It's a useful reminder that having a clear management philosophy isn't enough on its own.

Effective leadership means being able to recognise what's happening in your team and adapt accordingly.

That's particularly important for a new manager. Your preferred management style is only a starting point. Experience teaches you when somebody needs clear direction and when they need more freedom; when the team needs structure and when the process is getting in its way.

The best managers tend to find a balance: giving people enough clarity to know what's expected of them, and enough freedom to use their own strengths.

Communication isn't just about giving instructions

We think about this a lot in our own work with managers. The part of communication that's easy to skip past in a busy week is rarely the instructions themselves.

It's listening properly and asking a better question instead of jumping to an answer. Giving feedback someone can use, rather than feedback that simply makes the manager feel they've said their piece.

Good communication skills for managers also mean adapting to the person in front of you.

One team member might need a very clear brief. Someone more experienced might perform better when they're given the outcome and trusted to decide how to achieve it. Someone whose confidence has taken a knock may need supporting in a different way.

Good communication isn't about finding the perfect management script. It's about understanding how your words and actions are being received.

Management vs Leadership: Thinking Ahead 

We need to make a distinction between managing what is happening now and leading what happens next.

Management matters. Someone needs to organise the work, monitor performance, solve immediate problems and make sure things get done.

Leadership asks slightly different questions:

Where are we going?

What might get in our way?

What does this team need from me to get there?

Learning how to think ahead is one of the hardest shifts for a first-time manager to make.

It's the move from finishing your own to-do list to noticing that someone on your team is quietly heading for a difficult few weeks. It's recognising a gap in the team's skills that might not cause a problem today but could matter in three months. It's developing someone now because you know they'll be capable of taking on more responsibility later.

A good leader must deal with what's happening today without becoming completely consumed by it.

Give people the chance to lead before you have to

One of the things we like most about grassroots football is that nobody waits for a child to be named captain before they let them take responsibility.

The same should be true at work.

You don't need a promotion to chair a meeting, take ownership of a small project, suggest a better way of doing something or show a newer colleague the ropes.

And developing leaders shouldn't stop with the person you've identified.

Good leaders develop other people. A coach isn't successful simply because of what they can do themselves, but because of what the people around them become capable of doing. Managers should think in much the same way.

If someone on your team is beginning to show leadership potential, give them opportunities to make decisions, solve problems and support others.

Those small experiences matter because leadership is very hard to learn purely in theory. People need somewhere to practice it, get it wrong occasionally, receive feedback and try again.

From individual potential to team performance

This is where the impact of leadership on organisational performance becomes much easier to see, because sport makes it so visible.

A team can be full of individually talented people and still underperform if nobody is bringing those individuals together around a shared goal.

Businesses aren't so different.

You can recruit talented people and put good systems in place, but that doesn't automatically create a high-performing team.

Leadership is part of what connects the two.

Good leaders create clarity around what the team is trying to achieve. They help people understand their role in getting there. They recognise individual strengths, deal with problems and create an environment where people feel able to contribute ideas, make decisions and ask for help.

Skills and resources matter, but they turn into results when people are working effectively together.

We've looked in more detail at the impact effective leadership can have on organisational performance, including its relationship with culture, developing talent and longer-term business performance.

A new season is a chance to build new leaders

Every football season starts with a clean slate and a group of people working out what they can achieve together.

Some of the children taking their first steps onto grassroots pitch this year will eventually become captains or coaches. Plenty of others will take the confidence, communication, decision-making and teamwork they've developed through sport into completely different careers.

Workplaces have much the same opportunity.

There will be people in organisations right now who aren't managers but are already beginning to influence others, take responsibility, solve problems and think about the performance of the wider team.

Don't wait until they've been promoted to start developing them.

If anything, that's leaving it a little late.

That's one of the reasons we've introduced our new Business Skills for Emerging Leaders Level 3 apprenticeship programme.

Built around the Level 3 Business Administrator apprenticeship, the programme is a natural alternative for employers looking for a replacement for the Level 3 Team Leader apprenticeship and a way to continue developing future managers and leaders.

Alongside achieving the Level 3 Business Administrator Apprenticeship, learners also achieve Foundation Chartered Manager (fCMgr) status through the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), recognising their professional development and leadership potential. 

It combines essential business administration skills with practical leadership development, including communication, problem-solving, working effectively with others and taking greater ownership. It’s designed for people who are showing leadership potential or starting to take on more responsibility, before they necessarily have a management job title.

For employers, it’s an opportunity to invest in the people who could become the managers and leaders your organisation needs next.

Because the best time to start developing your next generation of leaders isn't after you've promoted them.

It's while they're still emerging.